O'Henry Selected Stories

New York: Book Of The Month. Very Good/Very Good. 1994. Hard Cover. 6.5" By 9.5" Tall. Dust jacket complete. Brown cloth spine over boards. Bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership marks. 467 pages clean and tight. 0. Henry was in his lifetime-and possibly has been since his death-the most widely read writer in America. Like William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, he has been honored by having a prestigious literary award-the 0. Henry Short Story Prize-named after him. But his very popularity has often worked against him in assigning him a place in the pantheon of American literature. This collection brings together a considerable selection of the work that won 0. Henry his millions of readers and also seeks to extend the limits of what we think of when we say the words "an 0. Henry story." For 0. Henry has perennial freshness: there's the voice, which is as smart and funny as a Damon Runyon story. There are the characters: the plucky shopgirls and grifters and would-be boulevardiers of "Transients in Arcadia," "A Service of Love," and "Innocents of Broadway," but also the less familiar cowboys and soldiers of fortune and society matrons of "The Pimienta Pancakes," "A Doubled-Dyed Deceiver," and "A Ghost of a Chance." And there are 0. Henry's evocations of place and atmosphere, which are always precise and arresting. Here, too, for the first time in any selection of 0. Henry's writings, is the complete Cabbages and Kings, the novel in stories that was 0. Henry's first published book. Set in a Latin American republic at the turn of the century, it's an engaging, often funny story of love and greed and chicanery. The result is a collection that provides a fresh view of 0. Henry while showing why he has always delighted such a wide audience. .